With the holiday shopping season in full swing, millions of businesses will see a spike in payment activity. And unfortunately, many of them will see a spike in data theft, too. This is a vital time of year for merchants to take a look at their payment security strategy and ask themselves if they are truly doing everything they can to protect their customers’ payment data – and their brand – from the devastating effects of a data breach.

Shift4 is headed to the Big Apple for Retail’s BIG Show, January 15-17. The National Retail Federation’s annual expo is always a great forum to discuss all things retail, and we’ll be there to demonstrate how our DOLLARS ON THE NET payment gateway delivers secure, reliable, and proven payment processing to omnicommerce retailers.

The transition to EMV is a journey – and thanks to our vast experience, we’re reducing the number of bumps you may experience along the road. (After all, we want it to be a journey you’re glad you took.)

Add new revenue centers and make paying for goods or services more convenient for your customers with Ingenico’s sleek and secure new iSMP4 Companion, which (pardon the pun) happens to be a great companion to Shift4’s VT4 mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solution. (Bonus: our Universal Transaction Gateway already supports it.) This smart mobile point-of-sale device is out now and Ingenico is currently seeking pilot opportunities.

VT4 is the most versatile mobile point-of-sale solution available. It works on any smartphone, tablet, or laptop with a variety of accessory packages, including the new iSMP4 Companion. One of the biggest draws to VT4 has been the ability for administrators to control VT4 settings in real time via the backend application, 4tress. (Think of it as VT4’s mission control center.) Now, 4tress has a polished new look and feel, so it’s even easier to navigate when you’re updating user permissions, adding or updating shelf items, pulling sales reports, and more.

Last year, we put out an article explaining how the arrival of EMV essentially killed the concept of swipe ahead. With EMV, customers have to wait until all items are rung up and a total is calculated before inserting their cards – and then wait 15-20 agonizing seconds for processing before they can remove their card. Good news! This no longer has to be the case.

As a leader in the payments space and a dedicated merchant advocate, Shift4 routinely updates our Universal Transaction Gateway (UTG) in response to industry trends and merchant feedback. While some of these changes are minor tweaks and behind-the-scenes improvements, others may have a larger impact on your business.

While it does serve a very specific purpose, EMV was oversold as the payment security cure-all to stop the seemingly endless string of data breaches that have made headlines in recent years. The fact remains that EMV does nothing to actually stop breaches.

As a leader in the payments space and a dedicated merchant advocate, Shift4 routinely updates our Universal Transaction Gateway (UTG) in response to industry trends and merchant feedback. While some of these changes are minor tweaks and behind-the-scenes improvements, others may have a larger impact on your business.

As you already know, Shift4 is committed to securing your business, your brand, and your customers’ card data. As part of our mission to help you stay secure and PCI complaint, we’ll be sunsetting support for six payment devices effective January, 1, 2017

Many of you have been looking into purchasing new payment devices to accept EMV chip cards. Shift4 has carefully selected a variety of secure EMV devices. And, with nearly a dozen different device options currently offered, you can customize your EMV setup to fit your specific business.

You probably take your smartphone with you wherever you go, so it should come as no surprise that mobile payments usage has been steadily increasing. But, with all of the different mobile technologies out there, we know that it can sometimes be confusing and overwhelming.

Every summer, thousands of the hospitality industry’s brightest and most influential players flock to HITEC, the world’s largest hospitality technology show. This year, we sent a dozen of our payments experts down to New Orleans to visit with our partners and provide payments advice and support to the thousands of hoteliers in attendance.

Shift4 is proud to offer EMV with more device and processor combinations than any other gateway provider. More than 70 of our valued point-of-sale and property management system partners who have integrated their systems with our DOLLARS ON THE NET® payment gateway have now made the tweaks necessary to certify those solutions for EMV.

Shift4’s mobile point-of-sale solution, VT4®, is already one of the most secure, flexible, and scalable options for merchants in any industry. VT4 opens up revenue streams that didn’t exist before, such as kiosks and food stands at events or mobile checkout in your store.

Most merchants are familiar with partial authorizations on gift card transactions. A customer eats dinner at your restaurant, pays their bill with a gift card, and then $25 is taken off their bill and your point of sale (POS) asks for another form of payment to take care of the remaining balance.

We knew that many of you would be eager to add EMV, so Shift4 got into certification early and are currently processing EMV in the U.S. and Canada with several processors. However, if you’ve read our executive insight blogs recently, you’ll know that the delay for EMV adoption is out of our hands.

If EMV were a kid on a playground, we’d say it doesn’t play well with others.

Whether as a consumer or a merchant, you’ve probably noticed that EMV transactions take a long time – sometimes, a really long time – to process. In fact, most EMV chip transactions take up to 20 seconds simply to get a bank authorization.

If you use Shift4's test environment, Certify, then you should read this important message, as it contains important information that may impact your ability to run tests with Shift4. Certify is most often used by independent software vendors that supply point-of-sale and property management systems, as well as those merchants that own and operate their own systems.

If you sign in to your DOLLARS ON THE NET® account using the word “Admin” or “Administrator,” then you’re the king of the mountain, queen of the castle, ruler of the roost – or at the very least, a financially responsible individual at your business.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to payment data security, which is why Shift4 layers numerous security tools to protect our merchant customers in both card-present and card-not-present scenarios, as well as call centers and other specialized environments.

I watched an interesting and entertaining Twitter dialogue unfold late last month between two payments industry experts. Ian Kar, who covers the payments industry for online news publication Quartz, was covering PayPal’s earnings call when he heard PayPal CEO Dan Schulman make a pretty bold claim:

We've seen a pattern of confusion from merchants who are attempting to complete their PCI compliance forms. Shift4 has provided some frequently asked questions (along with our answers) to help clear things up.

Shift4 is proud to sponsor the Science Olympiad program at Centennial High School in Las Vegas, NV, for another year. This program serves as a valuable resource for tech-savvy high school students who want to pursue careers in science and technology fields.

For merchants, there is an all too common tendency to "fire and forget" when using security tools. You might have just completed your most recent PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) assessment, installed new antivirus software, or added EMV.

For years, Shift4 has provided small merchants with direct payment processing to American Express (AMEX) along with support for the AMEX OnePoint program. OnePoint catered to merchants that processed less than $500,000 (under a single tax ID) in AMEX charges each year.

Shift4 is proud to sponsor Faith Lutheran High School’s VEX Robotics program. This program serves as a pathway for students to learn valuable technical skills that can prepare them for a career in engineering.